Stereo Review In Review: September 1979

By Wm. on October 7, 2026

These late 70s issues of SR were so packed, compared to what came on offer a few years later. We’re imbibing this time from the fire hose that arrived at my house toward the beginning of my sophomore year of high school.

Article
Noel Coppage Writes About Dolly Parton
Coppage gives a meditation on Parton’s move toward pop stardom, noting that she’d signed on with the huge LA management firm Katz-Gallin for help. Why? “To underline the question, consider this: what do Cher, Tony Orlando, Donny and Marie, Paul Lynde, Olivia Newton-John, and Mac Davis have in common? …They are perhaps the most unabashed hustlers among us, and they are or have been ubiquitous on television, in print, and so on. But the two main things they have in common is they are all managed by Katz-Gallin and they all have a lot more confidence than talent.” Coppage of course believes Parton is leagues above these folks but acknowledges that the firm may have things to offer her as she reached higher and higher. He’s curious to see how it all plays out, even if he disses her latest album later in the issue.

This month’s reviewers are Chris Albertson, Edward Buxbaum, Noel Coppage, Phyl Garland, Peter Reilly, Steve Simels, and Joel Vance.

Best of the Month
–Patti Austin, Live at the Bottom Line (PG) “Her vocal style is full and firm, more melodically oriented than that of some soul singers; the old-time gospel traces are evident, but she relies less on the familiar melismatic ornamentation. The strength of the voice is such that she easily dominates this set, even accompanied as she is by a group of first-rate instrumentalists…”
–Burt Bacharach, Woman (PR) “Bacharach’s work, the intrinsic quality of the music itself aside, simply gleams with confident, authoritative professionalism—the manner, the handling, the execution of absolutely every part under perfect control, the whole proudly signed with the flourish of a master craftsman.”
–Emmylou Harris, Blue Kentucky Girl (NC) “And then, having assembled all this stuff, she sing every single piece, every last note, so believably that you can simply be swept away, returning to the real world only when the side ends—if reality happens to be your thing. Me, I believe albums like this are proof that there’s more to it than reality.”

Recordings of Special Merit
–Carillo, Street of Dreams (EB) “Carillo has a solid feel for sweet melody, and he’s clearly proud of his voice, for these are definitely sung arrangements.”
–Ron Carter, Parade (CA) “Here our acoustic missionary has managed to reconvert—if only for thirty-four minutes—fusicians Joe Henderson, Chick Corea, and Tony Williams to music that will be played and admired long after their own effusions have short-circuited.”
–The Floaters, Into the Future (PG) “…a masterly blend of standard funk with disco, supported by superior instrumentals and arrangements that leave plenty of room for stretching out.”
–Arlo Guthrie, Outlasting the Blues (NC) “It’s a personal album, but Arlo automatically speaks for many a Baby Boomer, and he does it well.”
–Toots & the Maytals, Pass the Pipe (JV) “Reggae is a lot more palatable to me as satire than as Third World (Rastafarian) preaching, which is why I’ve always found Toots & the Maytals both the most enjoyable and the most convincing reggae band.”
–The Trammps, The Whole World’s Dancing (PG) “The thrusting vigor of their vocals is accompanied by equally full-bodied and aggressive instrumentals, and by building a sonic wave of unebbing energy they impel the listener toward physical involvement, movement, even if it’s just absent-mindedly tapping a foot.”

Featured Reviews
–Anita O’Day, The Big Band Sessions (PR) “…one of that rare breed of Women About Music who combine originality, style, guts, and musicianship in every performance…even though O’Day pays more attention to lyrics than do most jazz singers, she never loses her grasp on her shimmering tone…”
–Beatrice Lillie, Queen Bea (PR) “…one must be ready to cope and sympathize with a certain imperturbable, ramshackle grandeur that persistently speaks its peregrinating mind.”
–Nana Mouskouri, Roses & Sunshine (PR) “With absolutely no condescension or cutesie patronization, but with great warmth and liveliness and several clever additions from her own European tradition, Mouskouri has brought off a small-scale triumph.”
–Dolly Parton, Great Balls of Fire (NC) “If she’d let more of her real self, whoever that is, into her work, we’d no doubt have an album connected with feeling and ideas deep enough to be satisfying for a while. And she might even find that she’s superstar enough to call the tune on the times rather than vice versa.”
–Four Part Harmony: The Statler Brothers, The Originals, and The Oak Ridge Boys, Have Arrived (NC) “Neither of the albums at hand is a gem, but each is much easier to take than, say, the pious, rattling-dry harmonies of the Speer Family (probably the best known of today’s gospel-only groups) or the self-consciousness of a ‘preservationist’ barbershop quartet…”
–The Who, The Kids Are Alright (SS) “In short, this set is not simply a souvenir, but rather a superb overview of the work of a band that will still be making great music when pretenders like the Jam are back at the English equivalent of the car wash.”

Other Disks Reviewed
–Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, S/T (JV) “Brood and his combo play ‘white soul’ rock with flash and dash, creating a full sound with only four pieces…Recommended.”
–The Cars, Candy-O (SS) “The songs are mostly dirges, the characteristic tick-tock rhythms that seemed so quirky and charming first time out are irritating here without any real melodies to prop them up, and the lyrics are mostly computer rehashes of Ocasek’s earlier efforts.”
–The Charlie Daniels Band, Million Mile Reflections (NC) “But the attitude of the thing—the band is here, you are there, and a record is a record—gives it an abstract, academic quality, yet there’s not enough to it to feed anyone intellectually.”
–The Crusaders, Street Life (PG) “…homogenized instrumentals echoing the tedium that threatens to reduce all popular music to a common denominator so low even the tin-eared will be turned off.”
–Peter Frampton, Where I Should Be (NC) “…like most Frampton albums, it is a little more tuneful than the bulk of commercial pap. But it is still commercial pap.”
–Judy Garland, The Beginning (PR) “The basis of the Judy Garland legend can best be perceived by watching her films. She never really mastered the art of singing solely for the microphone…Much of the material here hasn’t been released before, and all of it is drawn from the Forties…an album for those who want everything Garland ever recorded.”
–Larry Graham & Graham Central Station, Star Walk (PG) “This album reverberates from beginning to end with the same heavy, octave-riding licks characteristic of Graham’s work since his Sly days, and the singing has a rough, tantalizing edge of nastiness to it…a solid performance that recalls more exciting days.”
–Merle Haggard, Serving 190 Proof (NC) “No, the thing here is that you expect an attempt to out-honky-tonk George Jones and what you get instead are little grains of hope.”
–The Knack, Get the Knack (SS) “Their songs make all the right structural moves, to be sure, but they have no melodies to speak of, and their vocals are absolutely characterless. They may ooh and aah like Lennon and McCartney, but the sad fact is that they have as little personality as Donny and Marie.”
–Ethel Merman, The Ethel Merman Disco Album (EB) “The trouble is that Ethel Merman and disco don’t mix. Merman’s in good voice, and she sings these things straight out and straight on…But there is no true marriage between the Merm and the boogie.”
–Sparks, No. 1 in Heaven (JV) “Unfortunately, Sparks never reached a mass audience; the Maels’ particular kind of talent probably precludes their reaching one. This new album is a compromise in search of a market, and I’m afraid that they have compromised away what made Sparks interesting in the first place.”
–Ray Stevens, The Feeling’s Not Right Again (NC) The album that contains Stevens’s last Hot 100 appearance, ‘I Need Your Help Barry Manilow.’ “It’s so schlocky, so Manilow schlocky, with that plastic grandiose self-importance and that quality of ‘romanticism’ cooked up by remote control, that you wonder why Stevens can’t see for himself what he has done here.”
–John Stewart, Bombs Away Dream Babies (NC) “What I mind is that one after the other of his songs seem to have the same tune, and not a full-blown tune at that, but enough tune for about half a chorus.”
–Wings, Back to the Egg (SS) “Without the other Beatles, John in particular, to keep him in line, Paul is unbearably cutesie-poo…The problem is that the guy also has this annoying habit of occasionally throwing into his albums something that really works, something so good that you can’t figure out whether he’s just gotten luck or he deliberately grinds out the bad stuff for a market he has shrewdly assessed as being desperate for elevator music.” In this case, Simels says that ‘Getting Closer’ is the great track, but what I remember from reading this review back in the day comes at the end: “…he did have the sense to leave his recent ‘disco’ single, ‘Goodnight Tonight,’ off the record, so perhaps I shouldn’t bitch.”